[Low-Tech] Inventing printing at TL1?

[Michael Thayne]

So seals are a very old technology. And a lot of the oldest writing we have was pressed or cut into media like clay, stone, and bronze. Is it just a historical accident that these technologies took so long to combine to mass-produce moderately lengthy texts? Or even possible that block printing of large chunks of text is older than we realize? Sure, it would be labor-intensive, but if you think something is worth engraving in stone, might it not also be worth smashing the stone into some clay a few times to create several copies? Maybe printing text is harder than printing the rough image of a seal, I don't know. But it does seem like this could be an interesting fantasy / alternate history world-building detail.

[Anthony]

We had a long thread about this recently.

[Michael Thayne]

From that thread, it looks like printing with ink is out due to issues with ink quality. But that's not mostly what I had in mind anyway. I'm mostly thinking of making it a bit easier for a king to say, order the distribution of many copies of his decrees in clay tablet form. Or, in a fantasy setting, allow the mass production of magic scrolls magic clay tablets.

[Anthony]

We have evidence of TL 1 rollers used to imprint patterns on clay, so yes, if you're willing to deal with the problems of clay tablets (heavy, fragile, need to be fired if you want the pattern to be durable) it should be possible.

[Willy]

There may be printing, but are there enough people who can read to justify the work?

Writing wasn´t at that TL not so widespread, inventory lists, taxes paid, and diplomatic letters, but besides that not much. The real use for a broader public came into being in the bronce age, and a halfway reliable system to get the messages around. Nobody besides a few people needed to write neither kings nor merchants. Even they hired scribes and in a lot of antique towns you went to the marketplace and searched to find a scribe who wrote you a letter or read it to you.

You can invent it for sure, but it´s one of this invention who are bound to get lost in history.

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Anthony

We have evidence of TL 1 rollers used to imprint patterns on clay, so yes, if you're willing to deal with the problems of clay tablets (heavy, fragile, need to be fired if you want the pattern to be durable) it should be possible.

Only cheap ones were made from clay. The best TL1 seals were carved into gemstones such as jade and agate. The level of detail is impressive.

https://www.realmofhistory.com/2017/...one-intricate/

I don't see why you couldn't use these for movable type.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Willy

There may be printing, but are there enough people who can read to justify the work?

Writing wasn´t at that TL not so widespread, inventory lists, taxes paid, and diplomatic letters, but besides that not much. The real use for a broader public came into being in the bronce age, and a halfway reliable system to get the messages around. Nobody besides a few people needed to write neither kings nor merchants. Even they hired scribes and in a lot of antique towns you went to the marketplace and searched to find a scribe who wrote you a letter or read it to you.

You can invent it for sure, but it´s one of this invention who are bound to get lost in history.

Uh TL1 in GURPS isthe Bronze Age and the oldest papyrus was 3,000 BC. In fact it is now believed that literacy in the ancient world may have been much higher than first depicted. For example, the TL2 Roman empire may have had a 30% literacy rate a rate not seen again until the Renaissance (and for some areas not until the late industrial revolution)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Only cheap ones were made from clay. The best TL1 seals were carved into gemstones such as jade and agate. The level of detail is impressive.

https://www.realmofhistory.com/2017/...one-intricate/

I don't see why you couldn't use these for movable type.

Price. You'd need many copies of each letter of the alphabet for each "page" (or whatever they're called when they're clay tablets), so you're looking at a small fortune to get set up. I suspect you'd need to make a lot of clay tablets to pay off the startup costs, even selling your services at the same rate as a "scribe" (or whatever an engraver-of-clay-tablets would be called). You may be able to charge a premium for those who want a lot of identical tablets in short order, however, as once you're setup, you've got unrivaled speed.

That said, I could absolutely see a wealthy ruler who was both enamored of mechanical devices and wanted to have a lot of copies of some edict or whatever distributed bankrolling something like this, provided someone came up with it.

[Michael Thayne]

So for what it's worth, I've decided that in the bronze-age fantasy setting I'm working on, printing mostly isn't used but the main temple in the capital has artifacts known as the "Nine Great Seals" which essentially let them block-print the nine-specific examples of magic scrolls in DF 4. (They're called the "Great Seals" because they're like seals, only bigger.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

Only cheap ones were made from clay. The best TL1 seals were carved into gemstones such as jade and agate. The level of detail is impressive.

https://www.realmofhistory.com/2017/...one-intricate/

I don't see why you couldn't use these for movable type.

I was talking about the surface printed on, not the master imprint. The master imprint should be something durable enough for multiple uses, though you need something large enough for the pattern you're printing.

Movable type wasn't a requirement of the original post, so I was assuming the equivalent of a cylinder seal.